Good catch below86. The introduction of multiple spaces really messes up that code I posted.

Some people do have problems posting code. It is often their firewall that prevents it. At any rate here is the code you posted.

with p AS

(

SELECT 'asdf1234' as Delivery_Site UNION all

SELECT 'asdf 1234' UNION all

SELECT ' asdf asdf ' UNION all

SELECT ''

)

SELECT p.Delivery_Site,

LTRIM(LEFT(p.Delivery_Site, CHARINDEX(' ',p.Delivery_Site))) AS Yours --This misses too many things

, LTRIM(LEFT(p.Delivery_Site, LEN(p.Delivery_Site) - CHARINDEX(' ', LTRIM(p.Delivery_Site)))) AS Seans_vers --This captures the first word

, CASEWHEN CHARINDEX(' ', LTRIM(p.Delivery_Site)) = 0

THEN p.Delivery_Site

ELSE

LEFT(LTRIM(p.Delivery_Site), CHARINDEX(' ', LTRIM(p.Delivery_Site)))

END AS My_version

FROM p

This made me wonder if we could just deal with the multiple spaces first and save some effort. Not sure this is actually easier but since it does work correctly I will share.

with p AS

(

SELECT 'asdf12345678901' AS Delivery_Site UNION

SELECT 'asd f 234 ' UNION

SELECT ' asdf 345 ' UNION

SELECT ' asdf 234567'

)

, CleanedVersion as

(

select LTRIM(RTRIM(

REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(Delivery_Site,' ',' þ'),'þ ',''),'þ','')

)) collate Latin1_General_CI_AI as Delivery_Site

from p

)

select *

, SUBSTRING(p.Delivery_Site, 0, case when CHARINDEX(' ', p.Delivery_Site) = 0 then LEN(p.Delivery_Site) else CHARINDEX(' ', p.Delivery_Site) end) as NewVersion

from CleanedVersion p

The second cte named CleanedVersion here is using a technique by Jeff Moden for removing multiple spaces in a single pass instead of a loop. You can read about that technique here. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/68378/[/url]